


fall in love with the pain of it

by AngelicGrace



Series: the pain of it [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Coda, F/M, Post-Season/Series 04 Finale, im sorry im just sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 02:49:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11049726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelicGrace/pseuds/AngelicGrace
Summary: "Guilty. On all charges."Rosa sinks into her seat (dead-weight, falling like a stone into water), and Amy thinks: this is how it feels to drown.





	fall in love with the pain of it

The woman stands up to speak, and the whole courtroom holds its breath. (Amy's been holding her breath for weeks. Since Jake and Rosa got out on bail, she's felt it, the pressure in the center of her chest, the feeling that she could inhale for hours and not get enough oxygen in her lungs because her heart's beating too fast and her hands are shaking and-)

"Guilty. On all charges."

Rosa sinks into her seat (dead-weight, falling like a stone into water), and Amy thinks,  _this is how it feels to drown_  (it's like she's given up on holding her breath and sea-water's flooding into her lungs. She's heard that you go numb when you drown, that it's almost peaceful. She can even taste the salt on her tongue, and it takes her too long to realize that it's because her face is wet with tears). Gina's hand rests on Amy's shoulder, and Amy leans into it, drying her eyes on her sleeve before any more tears can fall.

Jake mutters, "Cool, cool cool cool cool," under his breath, his face pinched and his voice going higher-pitched with every word until it cracks and he's coughing into his hands. Amy sees Rosa grasp blindly for his forearm and squeeze until he winces. Rosa's biting her bottom lip so hard that it's smeared with blood.

(This is a dream, Amy thinks wildly. She'll wake up at home with her arms wrapped around Jake, pressing a contented smile into his hair. It's okay, it's okay, just wake up, wake up, wake-)

"Ames," Gina's using Jake's nickname for her (and looking at her like she cares) and now Amy knows that she's wide awake. This is happening.

They're cuffing Jake and Rosa, pulling them apart, and Amy can see Rosa gathering up all that fierce strength she holds inside her (she slips some of it to Jake with whatever she whispers in his ear before they take her away). 

Amy reaches for her as she's escorted by. Rosa's chin is lifted with something that resembles pride, but her dark eyes fracture when they meet Amy's. She clutches at Amy's fingers with what looks like desperation (but that can't be right, Amy's never seen Rosa desperate in her life).

"We'll keep fighting," Amy whispers to her furiously. "We-"  _love you,_ she starts to say, before Rosa's fingers are slipping through her own and she's gone.

(Amy and Gina will visit her in a few weeks, and she'll somehow still look like herself, (though she'll be a clean cop in prison): tight shoulders, slow smiles, and knife-sharp eyes. But she'll have changed too: her rare smiles will be less blinding and more vindictive. She'll have bruises flowering on her cheekbones, but this will be the same: she'll fight, she'll burn, she'll endure.)

Rosa's walked out of the courtroom, and Amy feels strangely empty (the way she does when she hasn't talked to her parents in too long). It's like the knot of tension sitting in her chest has been loosened and pulled apart into strands (and her whole chest cavity has been scooped out).

And now they're taking Jake ( _oh god, Jake-_ ) and Gina's making an awful noise in the back of her throat, trying to bite her lip the way Rosa does (all strong and sharp and fierce). Charles has crumpled into Terry's shoulder, and Holt's face looks like it's been carved from stone (but the hard line of his mouth crumbles at the edges, and his eyes are suspiciously bright). Amy doesn't cry. 

But she leans towards Jake, voice cracking. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," she jokes, weakly.

"Don't-do-anything-I-wouldn't-do, name of your sex tape," he shoots back, but he's staring at her face like he wants to memorize it, and the facade crumbles. "Ames _,_ " he says (like a prayer, like she knows what he's thinking, and she does).

"I know," she smiles sadly, "Han Solo."

"I love you," he says anyway, "so much."

She pushes past the people that are taking him away from her, wrapping her arms fiercely around his neck. He buries his face in her shoulder (the way he does every morning, leaning back into her as the sun rises and her first alarm goes off), and Amy's eyes are suddenly blurry. She squeezes them shut until they stop burning, then looks at his face.

(She gets why he was studying her earlier. She catalogues the curve of his lips and the shape of his eyes and makes sure to remember the sleepy softness that he has first thing in the morning.) 

"I love you too," she whispers in his ear as they pull him away. (The first time she said it, it was bursting out of her chest and jumped off her bottom lip without any planning on her part. Every time she means it a little more, but she's never meant it nearly as much as she does now).

"Santiago," he calls over his shoulder (he's talking to the cop in her now, Detective Santiago, who'll fight like she doesn't know how to lose). "Give 'em hell." He grins, and he somehow looks the same as ever. She wants to kiss him (she wants him free, she wants him home-).

Amy looks back at him, eyes scorching as they turn to Hawkins, who's strutting out the door like she's gotten away with robbing a bank (she has, but only for now). Amy's got one of Rosa's hard smiles dancing over her face, and she doesn't even need to reply (Jake knows what she'll say). She'll give them hell.

**Author's Note:**

> please comment with any constructive criticism you have!! thanks so much for reading :)


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